Health care or tyranny?

When the President, Democrats and liberals (but I repeat myself) talk abut the need for health care "reform" and mention health care as being a basic right of all Americans, the public should know that what they really mean is that they view government as having the right to forcefully take money out of one person's pocket and give it to another. If an individual did this he would be prosecuted for robbery.

This effort to insert government bureaucracy into the health care system with taxpayer money, if successful, will eventually destroy the system and bankrupt the country. Our present system admittedly has flaws, but is still the best in the world and a government takeover will most certainly lead to a decline in both quality and quantity. What we are witnessing is not about reforming health care anyway, it is grab for power and a blatant attempt to impose government control over what for 250 years has been none of the government's business.

Professor and author J.P. Moreland explains the principle paradigm behind this movement in his book, "Love Your God With All of Your Mind". To quote Moreland:

"A congresswoman made the following comment: "Government should honor children's rights. Therefore, just as government should vouchsafe a child's right not to be molested, so it should do so for a child's right to government sponsored day care".

"Now what is wrong with this argument as it stands? Do you see what I see in this piece of reasoning? It may help your seeing if I place a mental distinction in your mind: the distinction between negative and positive rights. A negative right is a right to be protected from some sort of harm. Negative rights place a duty on the government to keep others from doing something to me. A positive right is a right to to have something provided for me. Positive rights place a duty on the government to force others (for instance by taxation) to do something for me. For example, if health care is a negative right, the government must see to it that I can get whatever health care I can afford by my own labor unhindered by unfair limitations based on race, creed or gender. But if health care is a positive right, the government has a duty to raise the taxes sufficient to provide me with health care."

Viewing rights as positive rights stands in direct contrast to the political views of those who wrote the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers had a political philosophy, informed by a Biblical worldview, in which they absolutely feared a powerful federal government, which they knew would gather to itself more and more power. The Founding Father's concept of liberty embraced negative rights. They viewed freedom as being "freedom from", i.e., freedom from tyranny. etc. In their political theory, the government's role was to maintain order, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare by ensuring justice in domestic matters, i.e., a level playing field for all citizens. In fact, the Bill of Rights is a list of negative rights providing protection from the federal government, with the 10th Amendment specifically limiting its power to intrude into the lives of citizens.

Now one has to admit that Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats in not letting a silly thing like our governing document stand in the way of creating "rights" and then providing seemingly free goodies to their constituents to ensure re-election, but this President and this Democratic Congress want to take things to a new level. When the federal government can forcefully take over banks, the automobile industry, tell corporate CEO's how much money that they can make and do a host of other unconstitutional things , then the very structure of our government has already been altered. Now Democrats and the President want to institute government control over the most elementary decisions of Americans to force them into a single payer government health care system which the country can't afford and which will give bureaucrats final say over who gets what health care.

How will they do this? Embedded in every overhaul proposal currently being considered by Democrats (no sane person would call it reform) are provisions that would force citizens to carry health insurance or face fines. In a note written by Thomas Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation, refusal to pay those fines could result in a misdemeanor charge by the Internal Revenue Service with Americans facing $250,000 in fines and a year in jail. The founding Fathers in their wildest dreams did not envision a federal government with the power to remove the freedom of its citizens with threats of fines and incarceration because they simply refused to buy a product.

There is a Constitutional right associated with government health care, but not in the sense that liberals mean when they assert that every American has a right to tax funded health insurance. The right associated with health care is a negative right. The right to be free from government tyranny.